Causal models for specifying requirements in industrial ML-based software: A case study

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Název: Causal models for specifying requirements in industrial ML-based software: A case study
Autoři: Heyn, Hans-Martin, 1987, Mao, Yufei, Weiß, Roland, Knauss, Eric, 1977
Zdroj: Very Efficient Deep Learning in IOT (VEDLIoT) Journal of Systems and Software. 232
Témata: Machine learning, Anomaly detection, Systems engineering, Requirement engineering, Causality, Causal analysis, Industrial systems
Popis: Unlike conventional software systems, where rules are explicitly defined to specify the desired behaviour, software components that incorporate machine learning (ML) infer such rules as associations from data. Requirements Engineering (RE) provides methods and tools for specifying the desired behaviour as structured natural language. However, the inherent ambiguity of natural language can make these specifications difficult to interpret. Moreover, it is challenging in RE to establish a clear link between the specified desired behaviour and data requirements necessary for training and validating ML models. In this paper, we explore the use of causal models to address this gap in RE. Through an exploratory case study, we found that causal models, represented as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), support the collaborative discovery of an ML system's operational context from a causal perspective. We also found that causal models can serve as part of the requirements specification for ML models because they encapsulate both data and model requirements needed to achieve the desired causal behaviour. We introduce a concept for causality-driven development, in which we show that data and model requirements, as well as a causal description of the operational context, can be discovered iteratively using graphical causal models. We demonstrate this approach using an industrial use case on anomaly detection with ML.
Popis souboru: electronic
Přístupová URL adresa: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/549337
https://research.chalmers.se/publication/549337/file/549337_Fulltext.pdf
Databáze: SwePub
Popis
Abstrakt:Unlike conventional software systems, where rules are explicitly defined to specify the desired behaviour, software components that incorporate machine learning (ML) infer such rules as associations from data. Requirements Engineering (RE) provides methods and tools for specifying the desired behaviour as structured natural language. However, the inherent ambiguity of natural language can make these specifications difficult to interpret. Moreover, it is challenging in RE to establish a clear link between the specified desired behaviour and data requirements necessary for training and validating ML models. In this paper, we explore the use of causal models to address this gap in RE. Through an exploratory case study, we found that causal models, represented as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), support the collaborative discovery of an ML system's operational context from a causal perspective. We also found that causal models can serve as part of the requirements specification for ML models because they encapsulate both data and model requirements needed to achieve the desired causal behaviour. We introduce a concept for causality-driven development, in which we show that data and model requirements, as well as a causal description of the operational context, can be discovered iteratively using graphical causal models. We demonstrate this approach using an industrial use case on anomaly detection with ML.
ISSN:01641212
DOI:10.1016/j.jss.2025.112691